Where does New Year start first?
The new year begins on Kiribati’s Line Islands. Kiritimati (Christmas Island) uses the IANA time zone Pacific/Kiritimati, or UTC+14. This makes Kiritimati one of the first inhabited places in the world where the calendar changes to 1 January. When New Year’s Day begins there at 00:00, it is still daytime on 31 December across much of Europe. The large difference is not because the sun rises fourteen hours earlier there, but because time zones and the international date line determine which calendar date applies locally.
From there, New Year moves westwards in small steps. New Zealand’s Chatham Islands reach midnight just 15 minutes after Kiritimati because of their unusual UTC+13:45 offset. About one hour after Kiritimati, Auckland, Wellington, Tonga and Samoa are among the places celebrating New Year. For many people, Auckland is the first familiar major city whose fireworks appear in news coverage around the world. Two hours later, midnight reaches cities including Sydney and Melbourne. In this way, New Year can be followed like a wave moving from Pacific island groups through New Zealand towards Australia.
Where does New Year arrive last?
At the end of the worldwide New Year wave, we return to the Pacific, this time on the other side of the international date line. Among the last inhabited places are Pago Pago in American Samoa and Alofi on Niue; both use UTC−11. Honolulu in Hawaii uses UTC−10 and therefore celebrates New Year one hour earlier. One hour after Pago Pago, the uninhabited Baker Island and Howland Island, both on UTC−12, reach 1 January. Those islands are geographically interesting, but we do not present them as cities where people actually celebrate New Year.
There are exactly 25 hours between Kiritimati (UTC+14) and Pago Pago (UTC−11). If the uninhabited UTC−12 zone of Baker and Howland is included as well, it takes 26 hours before every time zone has reached 1 January. This creates unusual but perfectly correct situations: when Baker Island finally reaches 1 January, it is already 2 January on Kiritimati. Someone on one side of the world can therefore already be living in the new calendar year while someone else is still celebrating New Year’s Eve. The worldwide New Year transition lasts longer than a full day.
What time is New Year in Australia?
Australia has no single correct New Year time. Around New Year, Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra use UTC+11 because daylight saving time is in effect, while Adelaide is on UTC+10:30. Brisbane uses UTC+10 and does not observe daylight saving; Darwin is on UTC+9:30 and Perth on UTC+8. As a result, 1 January begins in Perth three hours later than in Sydney even though both cities are in the same country. Lord Howe Island also has an unusual arrangement. To know the exact New Year moment, always choose a city. The table and search function on this page convert each place separately.
What time is New Year in Sydney?
In Sydney, 1 January begins exactly at 00:00 local time in the IANA zone Australia/Sydney. Around New Year, daylight saving time applies in New South Wales, so Sydney uses UTC+11 at that moment. Even so, this site never stores a simple fixed rule such as “UTC+11” or “10 hours ahead”. Time-zone legislation can change, and the difference from your location also depends on your own time zone and daylight-saving rules. By converting the actual local moment through the IANA zone, the displayed time and date remain correct. You can therefore see exactly which day and time to watch from your location.
What time is New Year in New York?
New York uses the IANA zone America/New_York. On 1 January it is on Eastern Standard Time (EST), or UTC−5. New York therefore celebrates New Year later than Europe: the difference is five hours from UK winter time and six hours from Central European winter time. The famous Times Square ball consequently drops at a different moment from the fireworks in London, Paris or Amsterdam. Within the United States, New Year then keeps moving westwards. Los Angeles reaches midnight three hours after New York, followed later by Alaska and Hawaii.
Why doesn’t the new year start everywhere at once?
Earth rotates on its axis in about 24 hours. The sun is therefore not highest in the sky everywhere at the same time, which created the need for different local times. Today those times are defined through legal time zones that use UTC as a global reference. Many zones differ from UTC by a whole number of hours, but offsets of 30 or 45 minutes also exist. Midnight on 1 January is therefore a local clock time, not an event that happens everywhere on Earth simultaneously. At exactly the same global instant, two cities can have different clock times and even different calendar dates.
Then there is the international date line. This imaginary line runs mainly through the Pacific Ocean, roughly opposite the prime meridian at Greenwich, but it is not perfectly straight: it bends around countries and island groups so that individual territories are not impractically split across two calendar dates. Crossing the date line westwards adds a day to the calendar; crossing eastwards subtracts one. In the 1990s, Kiribati changed the time arrangement of its eastern islands so that the whole country could share the same calendar date. As a result, Kiritimati now uses UTC+14 and is at the front of every worldwide New Year transition.
Which countries have more than one time zone?
Large countries and far-flung island states can span several time zones. Examples include the United States, Canada, Russia, Australia, Brazil, Mexico and Indonesia. The question “what time is New Year in this country?” therefore does not always have a single answer. Sydney celebrates three hours before Perth, New York three hours before Los Angeles, and within Russia there is a large gap between Moscow and Vladivostok. Indonesia itself runs from UTC+7 around cities such as Jakarta to UTC+9 around places such as Jayapura. Overseas territories can increase a country’s total number of time zones even further. A city is therefore almost always the best choice for an accurate conversion.
The live table above is ideal for New Year, but the same principle is useful on any other date. Want to congratulate someone exactly at midnight on their birthday, schedule an international video call, follow a livestream, check a deadline or find out when Christmas begins somewhere? Use When is it there?. Choose a place, local date and local time, and the tool converts that specific moment to your own time including the correct calendar date. The converter uses the same IANA time-zone data as this New Year page, so daylight saving time and unusual half-hour or 45-minute offsets are handled correctly as well.